the challenge
When I opened seempli’s Master Your Creativity page this morning I got the Story Line Prism and with it the Jazz Seed.
It was (and still is) a rainy Saturday and I didn’t feel like going out exploring the streets. So instead, I used this chance for a different kind of exploration.
my insight
I am not a Jazz fan. In fact, I never listened to a complete Jazz album. Until today.
Being in a staying-at-home mood and with the creative challenge I got, I used this opportunity to explore (or at least give a fair chance to) a genre I really know little about. So I did the first thing that came to my mind: I opened Spotify.
Searching for Jazz and Line seemed too specific, so I settled with one of the top three playlists I found. It was called Late Night Jazz.
Knowing nothing about Jazz, I couldn’t say if this was a good playlist to start with, but I hit play. The first track left no impression on me. And then came the second one. It was Take Five by The Dave Brubeck Quartet. Even I knew this one (without even knowing the name of the track or the band, of course). And the magical sax intrigued me. I stopped the playlist and went straight to the full 1959 album: Time Out.
Listening to a Jazz album from 1959 is not something I would have thought of doing before today (not sure why). But as I was on a mission, I did just that. But before I even started, the album art caught my eyes. Almost the entire area of the album cover was occupied by a painting by S. Neil Fujita. And the first thing I noticed when I saw it was the line splitting the painting around the third of its height.
I am staring at this painting now as the album still plays in the background. Somehow this painting is a perfect fit. If it was animated, it could have been a perfect video art to go along with the music. It’s warm, and it’s rolling and flowing, and yet it is strangely cut in a way that makes you stare at it trying to understand it better. And that’s exactly how I feel when I hear the album: the music is flowing, the sax is warm and inviting, and yet it is intriguing and non trivial. It makes me wonder and try to understand what I hear and why it feels enchanted.
reflection
Exploration is the fuel of creativity. When I first conceived seempli I thought about exploring the world around us — the things that are just under our nose waiting to be found. Since then, the platform has evolved, and when it surprises even me, nothing can make me happier.
Today I was surprised twice!
First, because playing with the daily challenge made me do something I don’t normally do. It made me experience something I haven’t experienced till now: listening to a Jazz album.
You might think this is a small unimportant thing to experience. Maybe it is. But it did something to my brain. It turned on the “exploration switch”. I actually listened. It was like hearing a foreign language I didn’t know. You might love it or hate it, you might understand part of it or none of it, but since you are not used to it, you are exploring it — knowingly or not.
But that was only the first surprise. The next one was that this exploration resulted in a visual Insight that fit perfectly to the Prism’s constraint: a cover of a Jazz album (inspired by the Seed) with an apparent line splitting it.
I couldn’t have imagined this chain of associations and moves that led to this Insight. That’s why I refer to it as exploration. There’s practically no chance another player would do the same. Every person playing with this Prism and Seed pair will go on a different path — on a different exploration — and therefore is bound to come up with different Insights.
What started with little chance for discoveries ended with a great experience, an exploration, and an Insight about seempli as well: there’s only one thing to expect from it: the unexpected.
mental notes
- Exploration and experiences go hand in hand.
- Exploration is not limited to the external physical world. You can explore new territories without leaving home (but don’t settle just for that kind of exploration).
now it is your turn… be creative!